Saul Williams: The Best Artist You're Not Listening To

::NOTE:: This is an Adam's Rant. I made minor grammatical changes but I stayed true to his original essay in regards to content and formatting because it was that good when I first read it. Made me kinda jealous. I'd hate him if I thought jealousy was a good reason to hate somebody. Ladies, he's single and studying to be a doctor - get at him! ::END NOTE::

::ADAM'S DISCLOSURE:: 

Upfront disclosure of political bias: Like most people I have a certain political viewpoint. Saul Williams is inherently political by his own choice and design. Therefore, it is not possible to discuss Saul Williams without discussing some political aspects of his work. So, this essay is not making any pretense of neutrality or being unbiased. However, even if you are a Trump supporter, please give Saul Williams’ art a chance or at least listen to his ideas on media consumption and the effect it has on us. Think of it as doing me a favor for being honest with you about my political bias.  ::END::

"Critics want to mention that they miss when hip hop was rappin’

Motherfucker if you did, then Killer Mike'd be platinum

Y’all priorities are fucked up, put energy in wrong shit”

-  Kendrick Lamar, “Hood Politics,” To Pimp a Butterfly

In “Hood Politics,” Kendrick Lamar presents himself as a person who doesn’t feel that rap beef and rap politics is important because the Earthly reality of growing up in Compton viscerally demonstrated the comparative vapidity and meaninglessness of it. The reality of his upbringing, his story, is more important than attacking other emcees. However, with the above line he is drawing a distinction - rap politics is bullshit but political rap is not. With these words he excoriates critics claiming a lyrical and meaningful decline in rap music while Killer Mike is consistently releasing dense, meaningful, politically charged tracks both as a solo artist (“Reagan”) and as part of the duo Run the Jewels (“Report to Shareholders” is a personal favorite). While Killer Mike’s political chops both inside and outside the arena of music are unassailable, I come today to say that Saul Williams is the purest embodiment of Kendrick’s point and he’s the best artist you’re not listening to.

“Sing along when Niggy sings
Without you he'd be worthless, homeless, Earth-less

Venus Hottentot, up in the circus freakshow

hear him speak so properly, cause every word is measured against meaning”

-Saul Williams, “Niggy Tardust,” The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust

I first heard the name Saul Williams through his collaboration with Trent Reznor, which was entitled "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust." It is also known as “that album title you can’t say aloud in polite company because nobody has ever heard of it.” The album was released on November 1, 2007 and I was 20 years old at the time. Ironically, I heard of it because Trent Reznor praised a music sharing torrent site we had both apparently been a member of and he discussed the project in an interview I was sent by my brother and my curiosity was piqued. When listening to it, I wish I could tell you that I had a revelatory experience, that the album changed my life. I wish I could tell you that 20-year-old Adam was smart enough, had the context and desire to understand the allegory and wisdom that had just been sonically dropped on him from the mind of Saul Williams. I wish I could, but I can’t because I didn’t. Instead, what I heard was a simple story, a clear and unashamed homage to David Bowie’s excellent Ziggy Stardust character and albums. What I didn’t hear due to the ignorance of youth was the social commentary that weaved effortlessly through the music like poetry. I would not understand beyond a surface level for another five years. Lines like the above are simple enough to get, ignoring the Venus Hottentot reference for the moment, Saul is using the character to comment on fame, much like David Bowie used the character of Ziggy Stardust to create an act of apotheosis into a rock star. However, five years later I knew who Venus Hottentot was and I realized Niggy Tardust was about the nature of celebrity through the lens of race.

Hottentot Venus was the freakshow attraction given to at least two known African women who were toured throughout Europe in the 19^th century. The best known of these two women was Sarah Baartman. She was brought to England by the free black man Hendrik Ceasars and the English doctor, William Dunlop. She was forced to perform in freakshows, specifically displayed for her exaggerated sexual characteristics and differences to European women. Saul Williams was not trying to be obtuse with his meaning. The references to Sarah Baartmann’s stage name and the freakshow were clear as day even when I was 20. I just didn’t know about the horror of the Hottentot Venus and I didn’t bother to look it up. I, unknowingly, had allowed my intellectual curiosity to lapse around age 20 and it took a few years to return. When I listened to the album again five years later I saw a new world of political and racial allegory I had not seen before because I was willfully blind. "Niggy Tardust" was not a meditation on the effects of fame, it was a frank and open calling out of the entertainment industry through the lens of a black man. It stood and at every moment it declared “This is a minstrel show.” Revisiting the album after all this time was an enlightening and embarrassing experience. The song, “Reparations” was always there and it loudly declares with a Trent Reznor produced industrial backbone: “Call the police! / I’m strapped to the teeth, and liable to disregard your every belief / Call on the law! / I’m fixin’ to draw a line between what is and seems and call up a brawl / Call’em now! Cause it’s about to go pow! / I’m standing on the threshold of the ups and the downs / Call up a truce! / Cause I’m about to break loose / Protect ya neck, cause, son I’m breaking out of my noose.” Saul Williams was not being subtle, he was hiding in plain sight. There’s an expression in magic - “If you want to hide something, paint it red.” Using the framing device of "Niggy Tardust," Saul Williams took his ideas on race and fame and painted them red. He made them socially acceptable by creating a “character” when the reality was Saul Williams was playing himself all along.

“My perspective on pop culture and how it may or may not dominate ‘news’ issues- usually the way I think it’s most fitting to address that is to address artists. If, in fact, it is a matter of what’s popular, I mean that’s what pop culture is it’s just what’s popular, then our artists should be more strategic. Our artists need to be more exposed, more educated, thinking more strategically about ‘Oh, okay, how can I bring this issue to the forefront…’”

-Saul Williams, Interview

Saul Williams is not a rapper. I have called him an artist consistently for a reason. The aforementioned poetic nature and weave of "Niggy Tardust" is because, before it was an album, much of "Niggy Tardust" was a book of poetry called The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop. The reason Saul Williams doesn’t occupy the same pop-cultural cache as Killer Mike is not because of a lack of talent; it’s because he is always an artist and a poet first and a rapper second. Every album he has ever made has been associated with a book of poetry. This, combined with other ventures such as acting on stage, leads to long gaps between the few albums Saul Williams does release. From 2007 to 2011 Saul Williams didn’t release a single album, he had a break between 2011 and 2016. The truth is Saul Williams is a hard artist to keep up with. This piece isn’t a hipster tale of how I kept up with him, because I didn’t. Saul Williams is a man who doesn’t release an album unless he has something he wants to say to a lot of people. The above quote from an interview with 24/7 Hip-Hop is clearly a personal mantra and mission statement. Saul Williams released Niggy Tardust with Trent Reznor because he knew the collaboration would inspire people to listen to it and his message. Saul Williams, perhaps more than any artist ever, understands that silence (the sonic equivalent of negative space) creates a framing for the use of sound. The silence amplifies the voice and makes it louder in comparison and through the framing of silence the impact of messages is stronger. When someone speaks quietly or not at all, and then speaks with great passion and knowledge about something, it inspires the listener. It demands attention and receives it.

“The message of entrepreneurialship is about what? Keep your heart out of it, streamline it’s what Jay-Z says ‘I dumbed down my lyrics and doubled my sales.’ …Is that selling out?  Yes, I would say, unless, I mean because it’s also the role of a poet to streamline ideas, right? Streamlining is not dumbing down. Streamlining is taking the essence of one idea, the essence of another and another, and getting rid of all the unnecessary fat in terms of wordage so it ends up being something really impactful… We’re capable of taking in a lot. Me? I’m frustrated by any executive or any artist who underestimates the intelligence of the audience instead of feeding that intelligence, because what it does because it warps our idea of what entertainment is or what it’s supposed to be.”

-Saul Williams, Interview

“Trump is not shocking to me…. When you equate entertainment with escapism, what the fuck does that mean for Bob Marley? What the fuck does that mean for Nina Simone, or Fela Kuti, or Jim Morrison, or The Beatles, Bob Dylan? These cats weren’t trying to escape the culture, they were digging in to what was happening in the culture, they were saying ‘look at what the fuck [is going on]!’ These are people who were counter-cultural, questioning authority, questioning what’s going on. Whereas, now, we have a pop culture that’s centered around rooting for the winner… If you look at the Meek Mill and Drake situation people are like ‘I want the guy who’s winning to win.’ Not the guy who comes from the actual fucked up situation, who might have something to say. ‘Nah, I want the guy who’s winning to win.’”

-Saul Williams, Interview

So, I’ve gone on for about 1600 words now about why Saul Williams is great, and if you’ve made it this far, I commend you. I want to close on these two thoughts because more than any song he’s ever wrote, more than any poem he’s wrote, they demonstrate something: Saul Williams wants you to understand him. I’ve written about my inability to understand when I was younger but that wasn’t Saul’s fault. I fell into the trap of not being curious, not educating myself more. Unlike many artists, Saul Williams doesn’t shy away from telling you exactly what his art means because, as he said, the job of a poet is to streamline. He believes in the intelligence of the audience and believes we should be challenged. He believes ignorance is the root of our ills, and education and exposure to ideas and people are the panacea. In the song “Burundi” off the 2016 album "Martyr Loser King," the lines “Factories in China, coltan from the Congo / Smuggled to Burundi hidden in a bongo…” These aren’t merely transitional lines, it is a flat statement of provenance regarding the technology we use everyday such as smartphones. Coltan is a mineral that contains high amounts of the element tantalum. Tantalum is an excellent material for the creation of high energy density capacitors used in devices like smartphones, produced in China by people working long hours for depressed wages. Burundi officially denies having a coltan industry and declares no coltan deposits; however, it has been implicated numerous times by the UN in the smuggling of Congolese Coltan, which is mined by slave labor under the whip of warlords. Saul Williams discusses many topics on the album "Martyr Loser King" but this, to me, is the most impactful. He is unashamedly stating a fact that many are unwilling to accept. Not only is suffering required in the assembly of our iPhones, they are built with blood minerals. Saul Williams isn’t hiding this in metaphor or abstract allegory, he is stating the plain fact for us all to hear.

Saul Williams is the artist you’re not listening to, but you should. I don’t mean that you should listen to him because his music is great, but because he is a man who has something to say. Listening to simply his music would do him, his message, and yourself, a great injustice. His speech is a powerful, finely honed and targeted weapon. His words combine the speaking ability and inherent poetry of Maya Angelou with truly inspiring ideas and a message of self-education leading to self-empowerment. He criticizes media harshly for being a distraction (earlier and to a much greater degree than Childish Gambino in ‘This is America’) but he doesn’t condemn the watcher. He asks the watcher to look at the media they consume and be skeptical about its effect on the world and themselves. I love Saul Williams, and if I were to somehow Forrest Gump my way into the presidency, I would beg him to be my Poet Laureate. I believe, personally, he is one of the best American Poets of my lifetime. I’m glad I was able to share him today.

If you have an hour, listen to him at Google:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhDoD6xUxsw